I had a 2-hour lecture on breast-feeding today, and discovered shocking facts about it and its immense importance. I'll just list out the interesting facts that i was taken aback by.
1. Animals feed their young with their species-specific milk, knowing that it's the best for them. Sadly, humans don't. We choose to feed our young with milk from other species.
2. A farmer stated that if a pony or a piglet is not fed with their mothers' milk, they'll not grow well and the piglet would even fall sick in the early years of life.
3. Generally, breast-fed babies have better growth and development in all aspects.
4. Breast milk has the most complete nutrition, with the most suitable proportion of all its content, with the most digestable and absorbable recipe, and provides needed immunization for the baby. It is so good thata baby can live exclusively on it for the first 6 months of life.
5. Babies who are breast-fed has stools that are different from those who are fed with formulated milk. Breast-fed babies will have softer, brownish stool that smells sweet.
6. Amazingly, its contents evolves throughout the duration of pregnancy. If the baby is born preterm, the milk produced is suitable for him. If he's born full term or any other time, don't worry, nature has it all under control.
7. Best still, there's something called fore milk and hind milk. Meaning, with every feed, the milk produced changes from start, which has more fluid and less protein, until the end, which has more protein and provides more energy for the baby. Imagine the baby having appetizer, main course, followed by dessert. Hence, breast-feeding mothers, please don't switch breast with each feed for the baby. Let the little one finish it's whole meal at one breast. If not, he'll end up having too much fore milk, which has lotsa fluid but little protein and energy.
8. Milk bottle is a NO-NO. Extracted breast milk is best fed with a spoon and not a milk bottle. In order for the baby to suckle well from the breast, he has to learn how to open his mouth big enough to cover the areola (brownish area of the breast) and not only the nipple. That's why the habit of suckling from the milk bottle will accustom the baby to suckling from the nipple and not the areola.Hense, it'll cause pain to the mother.
9. The more the baby is allowed to suckle from the breast, the more milk it'll produce. Breast-feed evenwhen the mother or the baby is ill. By this, antibodies can be passed on to the baby. There's also a recent article that encourage HIV mothers to breast feed their babies to protect them from HIV with the antibodies that the mother has acquired.
10. Breast size doesn't affect the milk production. Big or small, all have the equal amount of breast tissue to produce adequate food for the baby.
11. Make it clear to the medical staff in the hospital that you wish to breast feed your baby, and no milk bottles are allowed for your baby. Once the bottle is introduced to the baby, he's 'corrupted'. You'll need patience to spoon feed him and help him to re-learn how to open his mouth big enough for the mother's breast.
12. There's no such thing as 'the mother cannot produce milk la...' Every mother can. So, dont give up. Continue to breast feed until your brain gets enough signal to stimulate milk production.
13. Breast feeding reduce risk of developing breast cancer, ovarian cancer and uterine cancer.
14. Breast feeding helps mothers to slim down.
15. Breast feeding has contraceptive effects up to 6 months after giving birth.
16. Breast feeding strenghtens the mother-and-child bond.
Isn't it amazing how God had all these planned out? Hmm...
